Bus System Plans 25% Service Cut

MCTS bus on W. Wisconsin Avenue. Photo taken Thursday, June 4, 2026 by Graham Kilmer.

After years of budget cuts and uncertainty, the Milwaukee County Transit System (MCTS) is planning to reduce service by 25% next year to stabilize the system as it undertakes a sweeping redesign of the bus network.

The goal is to scale back service to a level that MCTS can sustain for three years without extra funding, MCTS President and CEO Steve Fuentes told media during a briefing Tuesday. During those three years, the system will finish and implement a generational redesign of the bus network and carry out a campaign “trying aggressively to find dedicated funding,” he said.

MCTS is working with the transit consultancy Jarrett Walker + Associates (JWA) to redesign and implement a new bus network around three overarching goals: stability, sustainability and scalability. The redesign process began a few months ago. MCTS plans to work on the project into 2027, with a final design recommendation completed before the 2028 budget cycle.

The existing bus network will likely undergo drastic changes over the coming years, whether it is redesigned or not. MCTS is at the edge of a budget cliff and does not have funding to preserve existing service levels. In March, the Office of the Comptroller forecast an MCTS budget deficit of $15.7 million in 2027, growing to $37 million by 2031. The system implemented major service cuts in 2026 to close a $9.3 million budget gap.

“If we reduce the service by 25% over the next three years, we can afford to put out the same level of service for a three-year period without any one-time appropriations, which means we’re not threatening or we’re not saying that we need to cut routes,” Fuentes said.

Bringing service in line with the state, federal and local funding MCTS can actually rely on will provide riders stability, knowing their bus route will still be there next year. Redesigning the system to meet the preferences and needs of the people of Milwaukee County will also provide MCTS with an opportunity to build a scalable bus network, where service can be added and frequency increased if the county secures additional funding for transit.

The redesign process will begin with extensive public engagement aimed at answering one important question for transit: Do county residents want a high-frequency bus network that covers less area but serves more riders, or do they want a thin, spread-out bus network that serves a greater geographic area but also serves fewer riders?

Because MCTS has a fixed budget, it needs to pick one goal or another and focus its resources on achieving that goal as efficiently as possible. Under existing budget conditions, the system cannot have both high-ridership, high-frequency service and extensive geographic coverage, Ricky Angueira, a principal associate from JWA helping MCTS with the redesign, said.

“You can’t do both with the same dollar,” he said. 

The Ridership-Coverage Tradeoff

If MCTS wants to serve as many riders as possible and provide fast, frequent bus service, it needs to locate bus service in dense population areas where local land use supports pedestrians and transit use. It will need to concentrate buses and personnel along these routes to provide the frequent, fast service that makes the routes useful all day long in these denser population areas.

High-frequency service is useful service. It allows riders to reliably use the bus for more than just commuting, Angueira explained. It cuts travel times, which include waiting at bus stops, putting more areas within reach. By locating it in areas where most people live, a high-frequency system will be able to provide the most usefulness, access and ridership to the most people. JWA has successfully redesigned systems in the past to increase both frequency and ridership, as Urban Milwaukee previously reported.

But there’s a trade-off, because a high-frequency, high-ridership system would cover less geographic area, meaning some riders in outlying, less dense areas may lose access to a nearby bus route, Angueira said. If a system is designed for geographic coverage, those riders in outlying areas would maintain access to a nearby bus route. The system would have less frequent bus service as resources and personnel are spread thinly across the network. Ridership would also likely decline.

“I would say that you already went through that experiment a little bit with these very recent service cuts,” Angueira said. When MCTS implemented budget cuts in 2026 they were focused on frequency. Across the system, bus frequency was reduced by 14%, but these changes led to an even greater loss of ridership, which declined 20%, according to MCTS data. “So you lost more ridership than the service that you reduced,” he said.

But ridership is just one goal; geographic coverage is another. However, without a massive infusion of new funding, MCTS can’t do both. The question also goes to the heart of what Milwaukee County residents want their communities to look like in the future because of the mutually reinforcing effects transit and land use have on each other. High-frequency, high-ridership transit will support, and thrive in, dense, walkable neighborhoods. Low-frequency, geographic coverage will support suburban, low-density development, Angueira said.

“So I’m not the consultant that’s going to come and just tell you what it is that you should do,” Angueira said. “I’m the consultant that is going to work with MCTS, with the public, with the board to together design the best network that we can.”

The first step in the redesign process will be answering the ridership versus coverage question. Then the system will be designed to most efficiently achieve the desired outcome.

“We want to make sure that that money is going where it needs to go in order to connect the most people to the most opportunities in life. We want to make every dollar stretch. We want to stretch it as far as possible,” Fuentes said. “Should we go with the frequency concept or should we go with the coverage concept? This is what we’re going to work through over the coming months.”